This morning Labor Secretary and Jeffrey Epstein deal-maker Alex Acosta “resigned,” and of course he and Donald Trump blamed it on the press, who have been committing the grave sin of reporting on Acosta’s very shady deal with Epstein.

Alex Acosta informed me this morning that he felt the constant drumbeat of press about a prosecution which took place under his watch more than 12 years ago was bad for the Administration, which he so strongly believes in, and he graciously tendered his resignation….

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 12, 2019

….Alex was a great Secretary of Labor and his service is truly appreciated. He will be replaced on an acting basis by Pat Pizzella, the current Deputy Secretary.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 12, 2019

Trump immediately consulted his list of the most rotten people in America, and pulled out the perfect successor to Acosta — Patrick Pizzella, who worked with corrupt lobbyist Jack Abramoff to enable a brutal sweatshop economy in the US territory of the Mariana Islands.

At a July Senate confirmation hearing, Pizzella said he didn’t remember much about the work he did in the late 1990s to help the Northern Mariana Islands—a US commonwealth 1,500 miles from Japan—defeat a bipartisan effort to rein in a guest worker program that the Labor Department found relied on indentured workers. When Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) asked Pizzella whether he knew about reports of forced abortions and routine beatings at the time, Pizzella replied, “I was not aware of any such thing.” Pressed further, he said reports of abuse by multiple government agencies and newspapers were mere “allegations.”

What Pizzella didn’t say was that he helped lead a public relations campaign to rebrand the islands as a paragon of free-market principles. Between 1996 and 2000, emails and billing records reviewed by Mother Jones show that Pizzella and colleagues organized all-expenses-paid trips to the islands for more than 100 members of Congress, their staffers, and conservative thought leaders. When they got back, Pizzella helped them convince colleagues that the Northern Mariana Islands were, as his old boss Abramoff liked to put it, a “laboratory of liberty.” 

Just another day in the Trump era, filled with corruption, cronyism and crime.